One of the most challenging problems in environmental remediation involves
hazardous materials which have leached into the subsurface and are at risk of
being more widely dispersed by the flow of groundwater through contaminated areas.
The result can be that contaminants located in a remote area may be carried by
groundwater to more sensitive water resource areas such as rivers, lakes or wells.
DOE's efforts to contain and remediate contaminated sites challenges the
state of the science in many areas. Scientifically rigorous models of subsurface
reactive transport that accurately simulate the movement of contaminants across
multiple length scales remain elusive. Under this new SciDAC science program,
efforts in this area will provide more advanced models for better understanding
the movement of subsurface contamination. This will benefit environmental
cleanup efforts at DOE facilities, as well as improve the monitoring of
contaminants in groundwater around existing and future radionuclide waste
disposal and storage sites. These efforts
will also assist the Department's research on using deep geological formations
to store carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere.
Groundwater Research Projects Announced in September 2006
Going with the Flow - Understanding how Contaminants Move Underground
Predicting the movement of subsurface contaminants using massively parallel, multiscale, multiphase, multicomponent reactive flow codes
Principal Investigator: Peter C. Lichtner
(lichtner@lanl.gov)
Los Alamos National Laboratory
“Scaling” the Challenges in Subsurface Simulations
Integrating biogeochemical models across multiple time and spatial scales
Principal Investigator: Timothy D. Scheibe
(scheibe@pnl.gov)
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
